Countdown
by LunaLuv13
Summary: This is a countdown until Edward and Bella's wedding! This fan fiction has quite a varriation inside. It even has vampiric mythologies! It's romanic, yet dark at times. Rating is just me being uber safe. Pls R R! Thanks!


And then it was twilight

Author's note:

I began to write this with no plot in mind. All I knew was that I wanted to get all the classics in. Everyone writes about Edward's crooked grin, how Bella looks good in blue, how she calls Edward's eyes "irises," how he dazzles her, and I even got that famous line so often used wedged in there. "What's on the agenda for tomorrow?" I rewrote it a million times, deleting it each time, and then finally, the answer was annoyingly obvious. What is more classic than writing about their wedding!? Duh! I knew that. Also, included is a song, "Everytime We Touch (Yanou's Candlelight Mix)" by Cascada. Basically it is a sweeter, slower version of the popular "Everytime We Touch." If you have never heard of it, go to the link on my profile, where xxlulabelle123xx graciously allowed me to link to her lyrical video of the very song included. I also have a picture of the flowers they decided on for their wedding. Please enjoy my first Twilight (which, by the way, belongs to Stephanie Meyer, not me) fan fiction, and PLEASE R+R!! It means everything to me! :D Thanks so much, wonderful people!

Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer. The songs belong to the artists (I don't mean any of the put-downs I have Alice say by the way. I just wanted to portray how picky Alice can be). I only thought of the plot! And the vampire version of history. I made that up too. For kicks.

P.S.- It started out as a one shot, but when I think more about this, I decided to make each chapter of my fan fiction over the expanse of one day (except for this first chapter, which is over the time of the twilight of one day, and then the beginning of the countdown week till their wedding). So, there will be 7 chapters of a countdown till their wedding, plus an eighth, final chapter of their actual marriage ceremony! Or at least, that is what I hope will happen… wish me luck!

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Vampiric Mythology:

And then it was twilight. Bella looked up into the eyes of her fiancé, Edward Cullen. The colors of the sunset, pinks and purples and oranges, the trailing leftovers of the light of the day, reflected against his golden irises in such a way that reminded Bella of the aurora borealis. Edward's presence turned the plain, familiar ending of just another repetitive day into a world-wide-known wonder. Looking through his eyes, Bella's perspective of the world was constantly changed into something much more brilliant, something much more illustrious.

Edward turned his head toward his only love, his eyes telling her in a million different colors, of how much he loved her. Bella didn't know if his lips were intending to look so inviting. "You're doing it again."

Edward cocked his head to one side. "Doing what?"

"Dazzling me." Bella couldn't help but smile back as Edward responded with her favorite crooked grin.

Bella decided it was time for a change of subject. "What's on the agenda for tomorrow?"

"Well, we only have a week until our wedding, so Alice will probably hostage you into another planning session. I think she was going to ask our opinion on music tomorrow. You know, for our first dance together as husband and wife."

"Well, I must admit that discussing music sounds a lot more interesting then deciding on which flowers to buy." They had already decided on a sweetheart tulip and iris amalgamation.

Edward smiled. "Then after we escape I was thinking we could watch a movie. There's a new action comedy that just came out that looks pretty intriguing."

"I'm looking forward to it."

The next morning Edward, Bella and Alice were all sitting in the middle of Edward's room on the expanse of the golden carpet, with almost half of his CD collection scattered all around them. His sounds system was blaring a Linkin Park song, "Breaking the Habit."

"Never! Edward, Bella, your first dance together has to be a slow song you can actually dance to! Not some rock alt where all you can do is jump awkwardly to the music."

Edward hid a smirk. Bella sighed. This was going to be a long morning after all. For the next couple of minutes all three of them rummaged through CDs, then Edward's velvet voice broke the concentrated silence. "Here's one that looks promising." He popped open a midnight blue CD case and placed the similarly-colored disk into the slot of his radio, then skipped ahead a couple of songs. "The Love I Found in You" by Jim Brickman rang throughout the room.

"Hmmm," Alice thought intently for a while. "No. The lyrics are really good but it's kind of anti-climatic."

And so this went on for a couple hours. The guitar part in "Forgive Me" by Bryan Adams was too acoustic. "In This Life" by Collin Raye was a bit too ironic. Even the possibility of playing one of Edward's pieces was turned down because instrumentals just weren't as powerful as songs with lyrics.

"Let's look for a female voice. They tend to be more maudlin sounding," Alice coached.

Bella almost felt like giving up. True, she and Edward loved listening to all kinds of tunes, but after 4 hours of listening to songs, her ears were raw with music and even amongst probably the largest collection of music on the planet, Alice found a flaw in every compact disk. Nothing was perfect enough. Absentmindedly she turned over a Cascada CD case. She popped it into the radio and went to "Everytime We Touch." Even she could tell this wasn't wedding material. She skipped ahead to "Truly Madly Deeply." Nope. Too hip hop. She went ahead to number 13, "Love Again," then gave up on that particular album and began to look for another one. 3 minutes later the song ended and the last song on the disk played. Alice suddenly looked up from her search, listening to the new melody. It was "Everytime We Touch (Yanou's Candlelight Mix)." It was a really sweet song, and described exactly how Bella felt about Edward. The song was a bit too slow for the old fashioned ballroom dancing Edward preferred, but that was an added plus for Bella. It was that much harder to trip and make a fool of herself on her wedding day while just stand there and swaying in Edward's arms than sweeping around a gigantic dance floor.

It was perfect. This was one accident of hers that she actually liked. She had found the song.

"Whew! What a long movie." Bella stood up and stretched as the lights in the movie theater rose from the dim glow they had been at during the film.

"Oh, I don't know. I think it seemed kind of short." Edward had spent basically the entire motion picture stroking her arm, her hand, listening to her erratic heartbeat, smelling her scent grow ever more potent as he aroused her easily triggered blush, just enjoying her being there next to him. "So where do you want to go to dinner?"

Bella shrugged. "Actually I'm fine. I'm stuffed full of popcorn and fruit punch."

Edward's eye glinted suggestively. "So, what do you propose we do instead?"

"Meadow?"

"Meadow."

Edward and Bella both lay face up on the grass. Twilight had long past while they were 'watching' the movie, so Edward pointed at different constellations and explained their derivation and representation to his fiancée.

"And that one there," he pointed to a large, four-legged animal, "is Leo the lion. He fought a losing battle with Hercules and was sent to the heavens to commemorate the fight." He looked pointedly at Bella. "Obviously, Hercules was a vampire. He was seemingly invincible with his strength, but he was an ostentatious being and used his powers too candidly. Eventually the Volturi caught up to him, and covered his death with another one of their falsehoods that blamed love, distrust and poison. Back then the Volturi didn't want humans to become much sharper then they already were, because vampires weren't so secretive during the time of Greek mythology. So, they constantly clouded human minds with lies that convinced the mortal race that vampires were heroes that rid the world of other mythical monsters. Whenever a vampire fed, a new story with a new monster was created to cover the death, and each time the moral of the anecdote was to never trust anything but the heroic vampires."

Bella was struck by what Edward was elucidating. She knew vampires were old; constructed the instant time began to unravel, but it was hard to grasp until now. Vampires had a history of their own, that dated probably much higher in the hourglass than the human race's memory did. She felt amazed and almost enlightened at how much a different perspective on a story she knew her whole school life taught her. She once again marveled at how the world changed when looking at it through Edward's irises.

Edward pointed at a different constellation. "That one was discovered by a werewolf, of course. Lupus; named after King Lycaon. His name relates to both the words 'wolf' and 'light.' It really is one of the most ironic constellations. The human version of the story basically goes like this;

"King Lycaon had fifty sons, and was a high believer of human sacrifice."

"Wait a minute," Bella cut in. I thought the werewolves were created to protect humans!"

Edward smiled. "Shhh, love. Remember that this is the human interpretation. Besides, I already told you that this was probably the most ironic constellation in the galaxy.

"So as I was saying, he practiced human sacrifice. One day he tried to offer Zeus a young boy. Zeus was enraged, and took revenge by striking his house with lightning, killing all fifty of his sons."

Bella tried to mask the stunned sorrow in her voice. "So in the end, everyone died."

Edward took her hand. She instantly felt better with the feel of familiar, cool marble against her palm.

"However, the vampiric version is a little more gruesome." He squeezed her fingers reassuringly.

"As you probably guessed, all the Gods that were rumored to live on Mount Olympics were actually higher-ups of the Volturi. 'Zeus' was actually a vampire named Jove. The first treaty of the closest thing to peace you can get between a vampire and a werewolf was between Jove and Lycaon. Basically, the vampires would keep hunting to a discrete minimum if the head werewolf, King Lycaon, gave the bodies of those put to death for their sins to the vampire clan." Edward noticed Bella's confused look. "Basically, if a human broke the law that was by punishment of death, such as rape or murder, after they were hung, the bodies would be given to the Volturi." Bella was stricken.

"Do you want me to stop?"

Bella just shook her head. He eyes were just shocked, not full of fear as Edward had expected, but her arms trembled slightly. He rubbed his thumb over the back her hand and continued.

"It worked out for a while, but there was a problem. One of the youngest (in human terms) known vampires lived in Lycaon's kingdom. He owned incredibly self-restraint, which is why he managed to 'survive', if you will, as a vampire when he was turned at such a young age. However, he wasn't able to maintain that willpower for long. He was caught stealing constantly, and lurked in the shadows which gave people reason to fear. Eventually, he drove people insane with their own paranoia, and eventually, the town in which he was inhabiting at the time formed a mob. There were 50 other male werewolves in Lycaon's kingdom, who took the part of capturing the young vampire. The citizens were so mad with fright that they tore his body to shreds without a second thought.

"When the King found out about the incident, he was very upset, but was forced to keep his word. He brought the pieces of the body to Jove. The Volturi council was furious when they realized the werewolf had dared to bring a vampire for them to feast on. That was the day they took revenge by killing off every male werewolf Lycaon knew; all fifty of them. The two females in his kingdom were either forgotten, or considered too unimportant to kill. And so, that is one reason why there are suspected to be less werewolves than vampires."

Bella opened her mouth, but her voice cracked with shock. Edward rubbed her arm comfortingly until she was able to speak again. "So many were killed. No wonder why the werewolves don't like you vampires." She attempted to lift the mood with a joke.

Edward sat up and placed Bella in his lap to embrace her. They stayed like that for a while.

"It's getting late. Maybe I should take you home now. Charlie will miss you."

Bella gave him a pleading look. "Just one more, please? I'm learning so much more about you."

He sighed. "This is the last one. Promise me we'll go back home as soon as this one is over, without a fuss." Bella nodded eagerly. Edward gave her a gentle kiss, and looked up again. She followed his gaze.

"You're a Virgo. That's your constellation up there. It's the second largest assemblage of stars known to mankind. She's the Goddess of harvest. You know, of flowers like irises and such, and fruit, like apples."

Bella gave him one of her I'm-not-an-idiot looks. Edward laughed melodically.

Then he looked down into Bella's eyes. "She's known as the famous virgin."

A look of frustration flashed across Bella's face, before being instantly replaced by determination. She whispered in his ear. "Not for long."

Edward smiled slightly. "And now we have to run before we miss your curfew."


End file.
